SATURDAY’S “Ralph Kiner Night,” as Tim McCarver, Kiner’s former TV partner might have said, was a good piece of television.
Roving reporter Kevin Burkhardt roved in all the right directions. He asked Jerry Koosman if he had any memories of appearing on “Kiner’s Korner.” Koosman clearly did. He told about getting to the set before Kiner, who had been delayed. When the cue was given to start the show, Kiner still wasn’t there. Koosman was on the set, on camera and all alone.
“I thought I’d have to interview myself,” Koosman said. But Kiner arrived during the first commercial, before Koosman had to say a word.
Burkhardt asked what he would’ve done had Kiner not shown. Koosman said he would’ve opened the show with the same intro Kiner did. And then Koosman, off the top of his memory, recited it:
“Welcome to Kiner’s Korner. Kiner’s Korner is brought to you by your local Fairfield County Chrysler dealers . . . ” Awesome.
Burkhardt had a question for Bud Harrelson: “When you were manager, did Ralph ever question the moves you made?”
“No,” said Harrelson, “but McCarver did.” (And then there were those contentious sessions on WFAN between Harrelson and Howie Rose.)
And though McCarver wasn’t in the house, it’s worth noting that in 1983, when he left the Phillies’ booth for the Mets’ booth, he replaced a soporific, stat-reciting fellow named Lorn Brown. Brown put Kiner, among many others, to sleep. McCarver’s arrival re-energized Kiner. McCarver and Kiner, it should be remembered, were terrific together.
During Saturday’s Mets game, Kiner told of a “Kiner’s Korner” with Casey Stengel. After Stengel was thanked for coming, he didn’t wait for Kiner to sign off; he got up and left, but he failed to detach his microphone, thus much of the studio went with him.
The best line of the very nice night was spoken about Kiner by Gary Cohen: “He’s as comfortable in his skin as anyone you’ll ever meet.”
And an extra good by Ch. 11 for showing the entire ceremony.
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Sit up, roll over, play dead: Mike Greenberg, on ESPN on Saturday, called the Dallas Desperados’ loss in the Arena Football League playoffs, which was on ESPN the week before, one of the biggest upsets you’ll see in any sport. And then, in case you might have thought he was only kidding around, he repeated that.
And then Greenberg said there are no words to adequately describe how big the penalty was in that game that negated a return for a TD off a missed field goal at the end of the first half. Yep, no words, that’s how big it was.
Yesterday, SportsCenter added to the wind shill factor. It focused on the team that beat the Desperados, the Columbus Destroyers, comparing their appearance in the Arena Bowl to the Mets making it to the 1973 World Series, and to the 1980-81 Rockets, who went 40-42 but reached the NBA Finals.
But even the biggest saps recognize that ESPN now functions like a Soviet-bloc, Cold War operation; all programming must serve the ESPN/ABC/Disney fatherland and home shopping catalog.
Last week, the “news” crawl on ESPNU repeatedly displayed ESPN’s and ESPN Radio’s College Football Bowl schedule – a mere six months away. So circle those dates, comrades, er, sports fans, on your 2008 calendars!
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Though NFL commissioner Roger Goodell very much wants players to stop committing crimes, he doesn’t seem to mind that team owners are continuing to commit extortion. For example, this season, the Vikings will not sell individual game tickets to games against the Bears and Packers unless the buyer also purchases tickets to preseason games.
Ed Coleman was caught stealing yesterday, and in public, no less. His WFAN Mets pre-game show guest was Billy Wagner. Coleman merely had to ask one question – any question – and Wagner, one of the best and easiest interviews in town, took it from there.
I wronged ESPN in this space last week when I wrote it failed to show in a replay Freddy Adu‘s spectacular move to set up a U.S. goal in the Under-20 team’s win against Brazil. ESPN was taking FIFA’s world feed, which makes such an omission even more mind-blowing.
While a correction certainly was due (ESPN is quick to demand retractions and corrections for even partial and marginal errors), ESPN rarely, if ever, corrects its mistakes, at least not on the air. Heck, ESPN would need another network just to list the times it took credit for “scoops” it lifted out of newspapers and even teams’ Web sites.
Last week was one of those ignore-the-past weeks, when Barry Bonds became everything that’s good about baseball, Bud Selig was expected to serve the best interests of The Game and Rickey Henderson became the perfect fellow to imbue good work habits and team play in young Mets.